


leave a piece of yourself right here (remind me that you came)

by 2ndtolastrow



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, Gosh i feel like this isnt enough but everything I try to tag it with feels wrong, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, ensemble-y but will centric, if I were to give it a genre, oh! he’s still using roy throughout this one btw, uhhh it’s h/c but a little more to one side or the other by section
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:49:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: Roy isn’t very good at this whole ‘soulmate’ thing, but there’s gotta be a reason he’s got them, right?





	leave a piece of yourself right here (remind me that you came)

This is the secret of Roy Harper’s heart: it isn’t real, but he uses it anyway.

 

The first pair of them who meet are Wally and Dick. Everybody knows that. The first pair of them to bond though, are Roy and Dick.

It was an accident really, a set of matched up tears in their gloves and a fall bad enough that Speedy had offered Robin a hand up.

The way they work is simple. Dick says something dumb, and Roy raises an eyebrow; or Roy does something dumb, and Dick laughs his butt off. 

(The way they work is complicated.

“I don’t want to be part of your little club. I told you it’s just a way to babysit you earlier, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Totally not why I’m following you. Why are you so insecure about it, anyway?”

Roy stops walking away, turns to face his second shadow. “I’ve never known you to give up.”

“Priorities, dude. Where’re you living?” 

The anger (he’s always so damn angry, and it never goes away) rises up. He pushes past Robin, snarling, “None of your business.”

“…And you think I wouldn’t be concerned.” Robin doesn’t bother to grab him, or let him know he’s turned around, just keeps following. Humans are persistence predators, after all.)

 

The last ones of them to meet are Roy and Zatanna. (The last ones of them to _bond,_ on the other hand, are Artemis and Zatanna, but that’s another story.)

Roy says a lot of stupid shit when he meets her, too wrapped up in himself to be all that aware of her issues. They work out in the end.

(He looks at her, sitting there at the kitchen counter, and suddenly she feels a whole lot smaller than fifteen.

“Hey.” It’s quiet, but she startles anyway. Her head snaps up, and then the tension runs right back out of her at the sight of him standing there in the dark. All the tension. She just looks exhausted, like a kid that young shouldn’t look. 

Roy isn’t too good at this part, but he comes up to the counter slowly, sits down next to her. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither. Nightmares.” She looks at him for a long moment, like she’s judging his awkward attempt to be there for her, and then it shifts into a soft sort of hesitation. “Could you—Would you give me a hug?”

“Yeah,” Roy says, lets his whole body turn and open for it, pulls her tight.

They’re both awkward as fuck, and kinda too bony for it, but it feels—nice. Then she starts crying softly, and Roy doesn’t notice until her body starts to shake, but he just holds her tighter. 

Maybe he doesn’t really get why they’re soulmates yet, but he remembers that first second of contact, all that _griefragelossanger_ washing over him. He holds her tighter.)

 

Kaldur is both the easiest and the hardest to understand. In the end though, there’s a reason they’re best friends, and it isn’t because of an eel on Roy’s hip or some arrowheads on Kaldur’s shoulder blade.

(The night is bright out here. It makes Roy miss the reservation, back before he moved out to Star where the smog hangs thick. “You have constellations in Atlantis?”

His head tilts slightly. “I don’t know that word, so it is unlikely.”

“Uh, a constellation is a group of stars. Usually they kind of make a picture, and they tell a story. Different cultures have different ones.”

“What are your constellations?” Kaldur asks, careful and yet curious.

Roy frowns, unsure of how to explain. Even when he was living with Brave Bow, he didn’t have a perfect memory of each one. “Okay, see that really bright one there,” he says, pointing out Sirius, “the proper name for it is Sirius, the Dog Star. If you follow along it, you get to Polaris, the North Star.” He lets his finger trace out a path.

Kaldur nods, almost entranced in his interest. “The position is has relative to Earth makes it so it doesn’t move with its orbit. Most people use it as part of the Big Dipper, but I grew up with Náhookos Bika’ii…”

They spend the whole night like that, until the sun is rising and Roy can point out So’ Tsoh, the morning star. It’s good, having someone to be content with.

Someone he can just _be_ around.)

 

Wally is… well, he already said Kaldur is the hardest, but if he hadn’t it’d be Wally.

(It’s not exactly a lie. It’s something they work for, how they are. They still know they’ve got each other’s backs from the start. Like the way Roy attracts collapsing relationships and Wally’s ability to always say the right thing when he really needs to cancel each other out.

“Dude,” Wally says, staring up at Roy’s ceiling, “you know you’re real right?”

Roy goes stiff next to him. He is not confronting this. “Yes,” he grits out.

Wally stops looking at the ceiling. “No, I mean like, really real. ‘Cause you talk about Speedy and call him the ‘real Roy Harper’ but, like, he’s just the original, the first take.”

“It’s actually Roy William Harper Junior, so I wouldn’t hold onto that ‘first’ thing so tightly.” God, please take the bait and just stop.

“Hold up.” Wally actually holds his hand out. “You’re a _junior._ Oh my God, this is the best thing ever.”

Even though he changed the topic, Wally’s voice still sticks with him for weeks. At least. Long enough that he stops saying “real.”)

 

He meets Miss Martian and decides he kind of hates her on the same night. When he meets M’gann, he’s pretty far past that. 

(“Why do you keep the morph up?” he asks after a mouthful of soup one evening. “Also, it needs a little longer.”

She looks down at the pot, switches the ladle from stirring telekinetically to with her hand.

“I—you don’t have to answer.”

“No,” she says, looking into his eyes. “I kind of do. I mean it isn’t all that hard—it’s not like I’m actively changing myself; it’s more like I’ve changed myself than that I am changing myself.” She smiles a little. “And it’s also like I’d totally have to go around being all ’hello, Megan! You’re taller than the doorframe!’ But mostly it’s because I’m scared. I get that no one here’s going to… going to be—that it’s safe but I—I just—“

“I get it.” Roy says into the quiet. It’s clear she doesn’t really have the words. “Not like I’ve been there—down here on Earth, white’s the farthest thing from dealing with that—but I know about being traumatized to your own body.”

“Huh? Oh! Hello, Megan! The whole mind control thing!”

“Not quite.” He gives her a wry smile. “Just after—after I was born, I guess, I still wasn’t—used to it? Being alive? I would look at my arms, and everything would feel out of place, and wrong, and like they were going to hurt me all over again. I wore a longsleeve under the Speedy uniform for ages.”

“But you’re—“

“—currently wearing a sleeveless uniform? Yeah, sometimes you get a chance to stick it to your trauma, and you have to take it.”

She looks at him, and he can feel the hope radiating off of her.)

 

Even though they bond the first time they meet, it takes him ages to figure Superboy out. Conner is both way too similar and way too different from him for it to be easy.

(They’ve got punching bags in one of the back rooms, right near the long one that Artemis turned into a ~~pretty good~~ makeshift archery range. He hears the steady thudding when he turns the corner into the hall and doesn’t question it; the sound is fairly commonplace.

Then he hears the _snapcrashshhhh_ and freaks out.

He sprints in to see Superboy—no, _Conner_ hovering over a broken bag, looking—scared. He’d expect this scene with Superboy angry, wanting to turn to another bag and do the same; with Superboy breathing hard, not quite processing what just happened; with Superboy satisfied at what he’d done, the tangible result of his rage. Not with Conner scared and regretful.

Not with him staring at the wreckage, walking about it like another angle will explain, glancing at every part of his body that comes into view and then away like he can’t believe this just happened.

Roy doesn’t really know what to say, so he steps into the room, makes sure to drag his right foot a little. (He injured that leg last week. It makes sense.)

Conner looks up at him, the same scared expression growing into something more intense. “I didn’t mean to—I just got so—so angry.” 

(They'll find out that it’s fucking Kryptonian steroid reactions in like a week, but right now Roy looks at a scared kid and he thinks _fuck._ )

“Take a deep breath,” he says, demonstrating slowly. “Breathe with me. Once you’re calmer we can talk things out.”

Conner’s face twists into a snarl for just a second, but Roy keeps breathing, refuses to let his doubts that Conner will respond well to this show. 

He starts breathing.)

 

Artemis doesn’t bond with any of them for a long time. He’s the third person ever, the second of them, and the first she chooses. 

(There’s a certain kind of pride in that last statement, that she’d pick _him._

When it happens, it’s beach day; the first day of Zatanna’s summer break because her school got out last. Roy isn’t stupid enough to go out in the sun for more than an hour with his skin, but he doesn’t really know why she’s sitting way off to the side. She isn’t in beach clothes, or even hot day clothes. A long sleeved shirt and _jeans._

(The only time he’d ever seen her arms bare before then was on the Daring Dangers mission, and for undercover they got mark suppressants. He doesn’t put that together until later though.)

So he comes over to find her in little patch of shade, halfway up the mountainside. He looks it over with a tiny little smirk, and decides he could use a workout.

She’s staring at him incredulously when pulls himself the last of the way onto her perch. “Do you not understand wanting to be alone?”

“I can keep going up.” The stare gets worse, and Roy loves his ability to bluff. (He really can’t, but she either has to admit she cares or let him do something really stupid.)

“Sit down, Harper. You’d kill yourself.” He sits.

“So what's with the getup?” 

She watches him hesitantly for a long moment, before making a choice. “I’m not much for showing skin. Or what I’ve got on it.” (They’re made of choices, his relationships. Choices to trust each other.)

His first thought is scars, but he disregards it quickly. Artemis doesn’t care about that, and, besides, from what he’s seen of her specific set of issues, soulmarks sounds more likely. He gets it. Hell, before that weird fight with her sister he was the same. At this point, he tries to get it done quickly, because he’d rather not bond in a fight a second time.

He’s only got one left: his stripes. (Ollie thinks that it’s a target, but Roy is of the firm opinion that that’s too much of a reach.)

“Fair enough,” is all he says. “I keep what I don’t want seen on the down low, but I got lucky on the location count.”

“Your costume’s fucking sleeveless; what’ve you got to hide?” 

“Red Arrow, superhero, and Roy Harper, ward of Oliver Queen, having matching soulmarks would be bad for the whole ‘secret identity’ thing, or did you not catch that, _Artemis?”_

“Shut up, it’s thematically appropriate.”

“Uh-huh.”

They sit up there, talking and laughing like that for nearly an hour. Then she reaches a hand out to him carefully, like she isn’t really sure. It clicks, after just a second, because she knows exactly what mark he leaves, they talked about it earlier.

He turns his palm up to meet hers.)

 

Jade is the only one he ever has a romantic relationship with, the only mark he’s got outside of them, and the only mark not on his upper body. Even Artemis’s stripes wrap around his shoulder, just barely under the uniform, but Jade’s mark starts on his right ankle and climbs to his upper calf.

(She’s the only for a lot of things,

The only one on the other side, the only one who he meets in a fight.

They do their best anyway.

He’s twenty one or six years old, depending on how you count, when she looks at him like he’s the best thing she’s ever seen. (Jade usually keeps that look locked up under snark and insults, and even then it’s almost always for Artemis; but he sees it, for just a second, looking straight at him.)

He’d caught it looking up, and she’d turned away, but he’s caught it nonetheless (and he thinks _she should be looking like that at herself_ ). So, of course, he blurts out “marry me.”

“What?” She looks back at him, at least.

“I’ve got a ring in my sock drawer if you want me to get down on one knee, but I’m serious either way. Marry me.”

He’s sitting at their crappy kitchen table, having been trying to focus the paperwork involved in his chosen career of vigilante. She’s sitting on the couch, sharpening her sai and pretending to pay attention to what's on the TV. Okay, not so much anymore. Now she’s staring at him like he’s nuts.

But the best kind of nuts. Like he’s a cashew or something. “Get your ring, Harper. We’re calling my mother, Artemis, and the rest of your mess, and then we can figure out getting over to the courthouse.”

He gets up so fast his socks slip and he crashes right onto the floor.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank y’all for reading! Also, the constellations Will describes are, as best as my research could tell, those traditional in Navajo culture. I just sorta used his comic background to fill in.


End file.
